Barack Obama’s political appointees are inept, incapable, and needlessly politicize the basic functions of whole segments of the federal government. That is not the assessment of firebrand conservatives but the result of a recent survey of high-placed career federal employees.

The survey, conducted by the Government Business Council, polled 148 Senior Executive Service members. These federal managers ranked Obama’s political appointees at only 2.0, down from the 2.3 rating enjoyed by the Clinton and Bush administrations. At least 10 percent more managers gave Obama’s appointees a D or F than failed Bush or Clinton’s teams. National Journal reports 20 percent gave such low marks to Clinton/Bush, as opposed to “more than 30 percent” for Obama.

More damning than the dry statistical data are the descriptions of federal employees of Obama’s team. According to one manager the political appointees are far more involved in day-to-day affairs, but “the effectiveness, skill and knowledge has dramatically decreased” since January 2009. Some said Obama’s appointees attempt to “break organizations.” One said the administration’s overseers “have a divide-and-conquer strategy, and there are way too many industry fingers allowed in decision-making.” Another said this led to “politicization of normal agency functions.”

With an effective rate of unemployment of more than 16 percent, the Democrat-controlled Congress voted to give their federal union pals the option to take 12 weeks leave — with four of them paid for by you.

The very fact that the “board” of the “federal corporation” would do this clearly makes the point that federal employees are generally useless and perform tasks so inconsequential that they can leave their desks for 12 weeks without even causing a ripple in the smooth but empty delivery of the “services” they provide to us.

The federal employees bring down an average salary of $79, 000 and are provided with another $40,000 in benefits. This is twice what the average employed citizen gets in pay ($50,000) and benefits ($10,000).

These benefits come almost immediately upon entry into federal civil service. The compensation package you pay for includes….

Last weekend, Al Sharpton hoped to outshine Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally with a left-wing, racial grievance gathering of his own. Like Recovery Summer or the health care town hall meetings (which were intended to build supportfor ObamaCare), it fell short of the mark. But the Obama administration did everything it could — perhaps more than it could legally — to to turn people out for Fat Albert.

The Washington Examiner obtained an e-mail sent last Wednesday by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to more than 4,000 federal employees that began, “ED [Education Department] staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the ‘Reclaim the Dream’ rally and march.”

The counter-protest was designed to cast Glenn Beck and his half-million followers as racists, while reassembling Barack Obama’s voting coalition for the 2010 midterms. Sharpton told his followers that Republicans:

think we showed up [to vote] in 2008 and that we won’t show up again. But we know how to sucker-punch, and we’re coming out again in 2010.

Minorities play a crucial role in the Democratic Party, even more so in the election of Barack Obama. The president raised eyebrows in April when he released a video calling on “young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again.” (Notice who’s missing from that list?)

The party plans to embark on a massive new program this fall to register college students, including many who volunteered for Obama as high school students but were too young to vote.

It is working barbershops and beauty salons in African American communities, and organizing events around the World Cup to reach out to Latinos. Every Wednesday in California, party organizers and volunteers attend naturalization ceremonies.

Sharpton’s event was a two-fer: a hate rally against one of the administration’s most insightful critics and a pep talk to turn out potential Democratic voters.

The Financial Times recently reported these dismal figures for private sector hiring: “Since the stimulus began, about 400,000 public sector jobs have been added (through May 2010) while 2.7 million private sector jobs were lost.” The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has a study showing that small businesses in the United States lost jobs in twelve of the last fourteen months. What is equally disturbing in the NFIB survey is that its small business members have no plans to increase hiring in the foreseeable future. Considering that small businesses are responsible for the creation of a majority of new private sector jobs, this is particularly worrisome.
One group of employees, however, continues to do well even in these difficult recessionary times. Federal employment has increased by 225,000 since President Obama took office. Moreover, according to USA TODAY, federal workers now earn more than twice as much as employees in the private sector doing comparable jobs.

For every other sector of the American economy, unemployment remains high, and those who have gone back to work after losing their jobs in this recession often are making less than they were before. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 46 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer. Economist Martin Hutchison notes that long-term unemployment in the U.S. “has reached levels not seen since World War II.”

All of this data should make it clear to most Americans that the so-called stimulus programs aren’t helping to get Americans back to work. The thrust of these various government spending packages has been to encourage the American consumer to spend more as a means to get us out of this recession. The problem with this approach is that, if the consumer is worried about holding a job, keeping a business going, making mortgage payments on a house, or paying down credit card debt, he or she is going to spend less and save more – which is precisely what is happening.

That’s why consumer confidence continues to remain weak. In fact, the latest consumer index from the Conference Board for July states that “confidence had hit a five-month low,” down to near the 50 percent range. It was at the 100 percent level a little less than three years ago.

Scott Burns had it right in a recent column in which he warned of “the idea that government could stimulate demand with deficit spending.” Burns quotes economist Lacy Hunt: “Deficit spending, rather than energizing the economy, is debilitating it. Worse, after the spending is done, the private sector has to service the new debt.”

If the current policies aren’t effective in putting Americans back to work, then what should we do instead? The key is to provide incentives to get the private sector moving again similar to what we did with the Congressional passage of the Kemp-Roth Job Creation Act in 1981 during President Ronald Reagan’s first term in office. The economic circumstances are different than what we faced back then (government debt is a lot higher), but the concept is similar: How do we encourage savings and capital investment in order to create jobs here in the United States? I would submit that the best way to do that is to replace our corporate tax system and its 35 percent tax rate with an 8 percent revenue-neutral, business consumption tax. That tax would be applicable on goods and services coming into the U.S., while U.S. exports would get a comparable tax credit. This gets rid of our onerous tax on businesses operating here in the U.S., while leveling the playing field with our trading competitors who currently enjoy a huge trade advantage over American exporters.

Adopting a business consumption tax to replace our current system would reduce the outsourcing of American jobs, encourage long-term investment in U.S. businesses, rebuild our manufacturing base, reduce our trade deficits, and put business owners back in charge of the American economy.